Private rooms are limited so register well in advance. For airport pick up, be sure to sign up by March 1st at the latest. This is Pitaka's service offering so there is no charge for instruction, donations are welcome at the end.

​Location, Commonweal Retreat Center, Bolinas, California

Easter weekend, April 10-13 2020

Cost, $600 includes comfortable

private rooms, vegetarian meals and complete instruction.

No teaching (of what to believe) is an important non-teaching on this intensive. You will learn how to inquire using core Koans, so you can authentically, as the Buddha recommended, "find out yourself."

Your guide Pitaka is no stranger to life's challenges and will support you from the day you register and beyond this retreat.

Prior to entering Zen monastic life and receiving priest ordination Pitaka attended retreats and satsangs with both Soto and Rinzai Zen teachers as well as Tibetan Buddhist, Vipassana, Advaita Vedanta, Sufi, Native American and Christian mystic traditions. This broad view helps assure that all seekers are welcome and supported.

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"This experience begins when you say yes. Now is the only time we can experience Reality or Truth directly. I hope you will join us." Pitaka

Zen and the Art of Inquiry intensives are offered once annually.

Your guide Pitaka has led 61 intensives in California and recently one in Europe.

Here are some details from Pitaka about the intensive purpose, theme and process...​

Attending this intensive is a choice each individual makes, to learn how to inquire, to participate in focused inquiry for three days and nights, within a structured schedule of activities. This is essential in order to authentically discover Reality... ultimately, what is always so. What is this?

It is essential to understand the main idea when entering this intensive... No belief is required to encounter Reality. Sometime during the weekend you may notice many previously held ideas, concepts and established beliefs arising for re-examination, dissolving, giving you space for realization of what is unknown. Whatever we think may be so, we must, in the words of the Buddha, "find out for ourselves."

Inquiry requires full attention, is not knowing, questioning, wondering, like a child wonders, truly being open. This is the spirit of true inquiry, the foundation of the intensive. Setting aside other interests and intentions, focusing as guided, and just for awhile not filling the space with our knowing.

This intensive does not require any previous experience of meditation. There are guidelines for the support of all present, such as no intoxicants, following the schedule of activities including silent periods, and non-interference with others during the intensive, and our commitment to arrive on time and stay with the group for the three days and nights through the closing.

To sign up now, go to the intensive registration page. It's easy to reserve your space using email and Paypal.